Brazil Prima Qualita 17/18 Screen is a 3 bean blend from Brazil’s best growing regions –Cerrado, Otimo, and Minas and Santos. Santos is the name of Brazil’s largest coffee seaport city located in the state of Sao Paulo. Most of the coffee exported through Santos is actually grown in the state Sao Paulo and the neighboring state of Minas Gerais. These two states produce the majority of Brazil’s coffee.

Brazil grows many varieties of coffee trees, but it is the Caturra variety that is the most popular because of its consistent good flavor, high yield and its suitability for mechanized harvesting. The Prima Qualita coffee are cured and processed by what we call the natural method. The harvested cherries are dried on huge patios the size of football fields and are then milled to certain specifications (bean size and lack of defects such as broken beans, black beans, etc.) The 17/18 refers to the screen size of the beans.

Our single estate Costa Rica “El Tigre” is a Vournas Coffee Trading exclusive, and a long-standing company favorite aptly named after our mascot and logo. The El Tigre is graded SHB/EP and produced by two wonderful, multi-generation coffee familias. The farms are located northeast of Costa Rica’s capital city San Jose, high up in the volcanic mountains of Heredia and Barva. This area is also part of Costa Rica’s famed Central Valley coffee growing region.

Our El Tigre is comprised of mostly catuai, caturra and typica varietals. It is washed and wet milled on site at the family’s private mill in Barva, and either sun dried or mechanically dried depending on weather and precipitation. The dried beans are safely stored in the parchment until the exact time it’s ready to ship. Then and only then is the parchment removed and the coffee prepped and sorted for export. Keeping the parchment on the green up until its point of export helps to retain moisture content, preserve acidity and protect unique varietal and farming characteristics, all of which are reflected in our cupping and quality scores.

We are very proud to say that we have been working with this Costa Rican family estate for 25 years. In that time we have built a wonderful, long-term relationship that provides us with the opportunity to market their fantastic coffee to our roasters.

Say hello to a Vournas Coffee Trading exclusive, our Guatemala Huehuetenango SHB “Dulce Leonarda” from the Gustavo Mauricio Tello family estate located in the La Libertad region near the small village of La Mesilla. In our opinion this is one of the top Guatemalan coffees currently available, and in the 10 years since we first started carrying it, it’s become a staple and a favorite among many of our roasters.

The cup is syrupy-sweet with subtle nuanced flavors, harkening back to the old days if you recall, when Guats could be profoundly interesting and clean with a smooth mouthfeel, good acidity, great body and profound sweetness! There are hints of caramel, cocoa and tobacco, a nice lemony-citrus acidity and a lingering, floral finish.

Chiapas as whole is well suited to produce an almost Guatemala-like coffee, that is to say medium in body, medium in acidity (although not as much as the Guatemalan Huehuetenango), and with light hints of an oak-like woodiness and some spice. It is a very versatile coffee that can be blended, roasted dark or light, and roasts up nice and BIG! The lot is shade grown and High Grown (HG) in the southern mountains of Chiapas outside of Soconusco. The growers produce a variety of Bourbon, Caturra and Catuaí varietals and transport their parchment to the wet mill in Tapachula. Chiapas coffee is a fantastic all-purpose addition to any menu—over the years it has been one of specialty coffee’s best kept secrets!

Chiapas is the southernmost region in Mexico, sharing a border with Guatemala to the west, and Oaxaca to the east. Mexico as a whole is the world’s 8th largest producer of coffee, with the majority of production occurring in Chiapas and Oaxaca. The mountainous highlands of Chiapas provide an ideal climate in terms of temperature and humidity for arabica cultivation; it’s also home to some breathtaking vistas and numerous ancient Mayan archeological sites. The United States is the main buyer of Mexican coffee, consuming nearly 80% of the green produced here. Mexico has been producing coffee ever since it was first introduced to the Veracruz region from Cuba in 1790.

This is a Vournas Coffee exclusive and perhaps one of the most underrated and undervalued coffees in all Central America! It is Strictly High Grown (SHG) by 3rd generation farmers, Delmar and Fernando Moreno Guillen, on their family estate high up in the Chiapas mountains. The farm utilizes a significant amount of natural shade trees, and while not certified organic, it is naturally grown and processed without chemical fertilizers. The varietals are mostly Typica and Bourbon, but there are a few Caturra trees still producing in some areas of the farm.

Our Rancho has become one of our marquis, staple coffees and a favorite amongst our roasters ever since we first began offering it over 14 years ago when we first established Vournas Coffee Trading. Overall it’s one of the most versatile coffees around; it can be roasted across the spectrum, blended, or enjoyed as solo cup or single origin espresso. The beans are relatively softer than other high grown centrals and develop a bit faster in the roast, coming out looking nice and BIG!

Our Kamarl A comes from high up in the Koban region, known for its ideal climate and high-quality Arabica. The majority of specialty coffee grown in Papua New Guinea is cooperatively grown by small farmers. Our PNG Kamarl A is an offering of small farm Bourbon and Typica, that when compared to other Indonesians is truly unique – exceptionally clean, sweet and with a more acidic profile than is typically expected. Here at Vournas Coffee Trading, we are huge fans of Papua New Guinea coffee, and of the many lots that we cup, the Kamarl A is among the best, on par with our co-op producers in the Eastern Highlands. The lot is pulped and dried in parchment then loaded on trucks to make the muddy trek down dirt roads to Goroka where it is milled, graded and bagged. Exporting is done through the Port of Lae, which is the country’s largest and busiest port. Coffee was first introduced to Papua New Guinea in the early part of the 20th Century; a rather late arrival when compared to neighboring islands. Coffee is deeply embedded within the cultural fabric of Papua New Guinea, where the coffee tree itself is often referred to as the money tree, and coffee beans act as a de facto currency, typically traded amongst the people as a staple commodity in exchange for virtually anything. Incredibly Papua New Guinea farms can accommodate two crop cycles per year due to its famously mineral-rich, volcanic topsoil and jungle climate. We have traveled the world over in our search for amazing coffee and it is our opinion that the farms in Papua New Guinea have the best soil, climate and overall growing conditions that we have ever seen; if you put seeds in the ground, it will grow whatever the crop! Somehow Papua New Guinea coffees have flown under the radar of American specialty coffee purveyors, although we suspect this will not be the case for much longer.

Our Triple Picked Sumatra Lintong Tiger is 100% Typica and produced by a cooperative of approximately 120 small farm holders from the village of Saran Padang, located south of Lake Toba within the Simalungun Region. The local farmlands are well suited for the growing of coffee (and tea) due to the wet climate, high altitude and mineral rich, volcanic soil that covers much of the Island. Lake Toba itself is actually an ancient caldera that formed after the catastrophic volcanic eruption of Mt. Toba some 75,000 years ago.

From Uganda’s Kapchorwa district, on the eastern border of neighboring Kenya, comes this high grown lot of washed, 100% shade canopy, mixed varietal, arabica. While the majority of the nation’s arabica is grown here on the slopes of Mt. Elgon, the Kibale Forest on the country’s western border supports a substantial growth of native robusta. This coffee is grown by a group of small farm holders within the region. These farmers share access to a wealth of growing and processing resources including four greenhouses, an arabica nursery for adolescent saplings, and a washing station with eco-pulping capabilities. Banana trees grow alongside the coffee, contributing to the 100% natural shade canopy. Almost a thousand individual farmers contribute to the overall lot. Each manages their own 1.0 hectare farm and is responsible for the production of about 1,000 arabica trees. In Uganda, coffee is the nation’s top grossing export, accounting for roughly 18 to 22% of all exports, and totaling 50 million US dollars annually. Tobacco and tea are the next closest exports with volumes in the 3 to 5% range.